


E-porterhouse69

by Sheysira



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Crossover, Gen, what should happen on the shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 10:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4702061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheysira/pseuds/Sheysira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tobias's story after 1x02 of Fear the Walking dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	E-porterhouse69

**Author's Note:**

> I love Tobias and while I think it must be extremely frustrating for him to see everything coming and no one listening to him, it also amuses me to no end how fed up he must be with the whole situation.

Tobias tried to stare the two strangers down. He wasn't sure he could take them on, should things get out of hand. Probably not. But he sure as hell wasn't going to go down without a fight. Not after two years of inching his way across the entire damn continent to get to the capital. Alone. Frankly, this was mostly because he had given up on relying on other people to have their shit together pretty early on. When the whole world started to change, they had proven pretty much useless.

He had seen the first signs. Oh, not just him alone, he merely had stumbled over early reports that went ignored by most. While everyone else around him had used humanity's most widely accessible source of information to update Facebook and share vines regarded as fake gore by as good as everyone else, Tobias had looked a bit further than that. Soon enough it looked like there was a lot more to it and no one seemed to really know what exactly they were dealing with. Aliens, military science gone wrong, a new form of terrorism - there were the usual conspiracy theorists blogging about it and Tobias was not an idiot. He knew that most of what he found online was downright ridiculous. Yet he couldn't stop reading all the posts and discussions about this new phenomenon. He also read the survival guides obsessively and then all the predictions of how the end of the world would go down, not yet knowing how valuable those would turn out.

The global reports of people, who most definitely should be dead, getting up and attacking others grew in number and they couldn't all be fake. He kept waiting for someone in charge to react to it. Surely, this would be acknowledged eventually. How could it not? The population would be warned and the authorities would come up with an emergency plan. Tobias waited and waited in his early naivety and every day he grew more anxious. He had never seen anything like in the leaked videos with his own eyes. But he started to see potential threats everywhere. Too man people in L.A. for such an epidemic not to be a major disaster. He tried to talk to people about it, warn them, wake them up, but they laughed it off.

Fueled by frustration, his anxiety only grew. Why wouldn't they see? His hopes for some sort of rescue plan by the government dwindled and the day came that he just didn't feel safe anymore leaving the house unarmed. He had to laugh at the memory of the tiny kitchen knife. Of course, he didn't make it through the metal detector at his school with it and Mrs. C, his guidance counselor, took it from him thinking she was helping him. She still thought he had a future. She could have reported him but went out of her way to keep the incident between them. Seeing that she meant well, he dared a last attempt to talk to someone. He tried to explain, warn her. Only to be assured that everything was just fine and he shouldn't spend so much time online. That moment he officially gave up on other people. It also happened to be the day things started to change for good. They evacuated the school and carted them home in buses. Now he knew for certain they were fucked. Finally, they did something, but he knew it was too late. He sat on the bus brooding as it drove off, feeling like going to his own execution. His eyes fell on her standing there looking lost and staring after the buses with a haunted expression. Their eyes met and he could see it. She finally got it. He could only glare at her in contempt. He had told her. He had begged her. He knew it was hard for people to really grasp it, because it was just too terrifying. But right then he couldn't find anything but bitterness inside him.

The next time he saw her he was scavenging for food. Her being at the school told him she was starting to understand, after all. She was kind of scavenging herself. Meds for her kids or something. He remembered thinking that maybe there was still hope for her. So he asked her to have his knife back and then he knew she was really getting it now, because she actually returned it. He hoped she felt at least a little bad about disarming a kid in what looked pretty much like the end of civilization. Bad enough not to make him go home without what he had been really coming for. She didn't and seemed impressed with his plan, even though she thought it was a little excessive. He kept trying to subtly give her hints and advice, talking about what he read. About what was most likely to happen should society collapse. It didn't work. She didn't see a necessity to stack up on food. More for him, he guessed assuming she'd come around sooner or later.

That was until she nearly got him killed. It was the first one he had seen and he wished it wasn't someone they knew. Especially considering her completely brainless reaction. He had just spent the last ten minutes or so talking about how they changed into something not even human anymore. And there she went, trying to talk to the thing like it was still her fucking boss. He warned her, tried to stop her from doing something incredibly stupid and then, without thinking, he saved her only to find out how badly he really sucked in a fight. To be fair, he hadn't known about the brain yet, but it was pathetic never the less. Still, he kind of thought that she could have spent a little less time being hysterical and useless while his headmaster was trying to maul him. He actually ended up begging her for help and even though she finally moved and bashed the thing's brain in with a fire extinguisher, he gave up on any plans to maybe stick with Mrs. C and her family through this crisis. Clearly, it lead to more trouble than it was worth.

She rushed them out of the school, apparently scared of any other encounters with those things and he had to leave his loot behind. He was making plans to leave the city even as she drove him home. Thankfully she didn't seem to have any major issues with dropping off a minor alone in the apocalypse, which only encouraged him more to stay clear of her in the future. He told her he would be alright and as soon as she was out of sight he went back to the school and packed up.

He left the same night on foot, staying clear of the major roads, avoiding people as much as he could seeing as they were the main problem, dead or alive. He decided to head for D.C. From what he had read in those online communities he frequented, some thought the capital would be their best bet for survival. It had been the most reasonable thing he had seen anyone come up with and he didn't care if it meant walking across the continent or that the idea came from some weirdos on the internet. They had been right so far.

Apart from this, he didn't have much trust to spare for anyone else and from the few and far encounters he had had on the road in those long months and years even, he didn't seem to miss out on a lot. As far as he could tell, mostly on robbery, rape and murder. He kept finding the remainders. It didn't take long for people to turn on each other. Many chose suicide. And then there were the numerous bases that were overrun. Nope, didn't seem worth it to seek company.

Now Tobias had finally come realistically close to his destination and even though it didn't look like the city was still standing, judging from how deserted and overrun the area looked, he wasn't going to give up now. Especially not with all the dismembered corpses he came across. Someone was on a killing spree and seemed to enjoy themselves way too much. They even carved letters into people's foreheads. Psychos.

All the more cautious Tobias was when the two strangers approached him with tales of an almost magical place they lived in with secure walls around solar panels, a surgeon and running water. To be fair at least one of them looked like he made good use of it. But Tobias didn't like that they had managed to sneak up on him. That they even would. Of course, they said they didn't mean any harm. The only thing that startled him was just that they bothered to describe this paradise they supposedly came from in such ridiculous detail. He could kind of see how people would group up and build a wall. Maybe even get water running. And yeah, solar panels where a possibility. But free health care? Utopic. No way these people were living better than some Americans sed to before everything went to shit. Tobias thought it couldn't have been dodgier if they had a van with the words „free candy“ written on the side in crude spray-paint letters.

One of them showed him pictures while he kept droning on about the details of this "Alexandria“. He was sounding like he was holding a damn TED talk about some development program that could save the world, if only anyone apart from the audience actually gave a shit. And could the name be any more pretentious? It had been even when Alexander the Great was founding cities everywhere he went marking his territory in the most literal way possible. But at least he actually had build an empire, hadn't he? A gated community in the fucking apocalypse going by that name just seemed a little bit over the top. He was about to heartily decline the invitation, but his dismay seemed to be pretty obvious, because the scruffy looking redneck decided to help.

"There's also applesauce..."he tried lamely.

Tobias looked at him like he had lost his mind, which was probably not that unlikely all things considered.

"Applesauce? Oh you mean the stuff that you can find everywhere that hasn't been looted yet? One of the few things that, after a few years on a shelf, doesn't taste any more like shit than it would anyway? If you were actually harvesting apples, why on earth would waste energy on killing off all the vitamins to make something you might be able to find for years to come for fucking free? How big is your apple plantation that you have to process the surplus produce rather than eating it fresh and actually get some vitamins into your bodies?"

The redneck just shrugged and the other guy pinched the bridge of his nose. At least he had given up on his makeshift PowerPoint presentation. "Look," the cleaner guy tried. "You might have noticed the mutilated corpses around these parts. Frankly, we want more able bodies to defend ourselves and you certainly fall under that category having come all the way from the west coast alone. There is nothing waiting in D.C. It's a fallen city just like all the others."

"Right," Tobias sneered. "And I'm supposed to just take your word and move in with you as canon fodder. How do I know you aren't the fuckheads who go around torturing people?"

"We may have offered you applesauce, but we have hardly made any move to dismember you," the one with the better hygiene retorted dryly.

"Could come take a look. See for yerself if ya hate it or not," suggested the other guy.

"I think I'll try my luck with D.C. It's the damn capital. Was."

"My group was goin' to D.C. before Aaron here found us. One of us had the idea, same as you, tricked us. Made like he was some super scientist with a cure. Talked us into to protectin' his ass all the way there."

"Well, I guess I-" Tobias started and then trailed off. "Wait...what?"

They two guys both perked up at his show of sudden interest and the one with the substandard grasp of the English language elaborated.

"Eugene Porter. Made it all the way from Texas before runnin' into us back in Georgia. Pretended to be on a secret mission to save the world. That kinda thing. Talked this big soldier guy into gettin' him to D.C. We didn't have nothin' better to do. Went with'em. S'how we ended up in Alexandria."

Tobias couldn't believe it. After everything he's been through this last two years. He was fuming.

"Take me there," he ground out between his teeth.

"Wait," the one with a haircut interrupted. "I think you are getting it wrong. There never was a secret mission. It turned out to be a scam. Eugene knew he wouldn't stand chance alone and manipulated stronger people for protection. It was still a good idea to try for D.C., no one's denying that. At least when you don't know how bad things are there. Alexandria is still your best option, I promise you that."

"Just take me there. I _know_ it was a scam," Tobias growled.

They hadn't expected his change of mind, he could tell by their uncertain expressions.

"When those dead assholes first started to walk around eating people, I was active in these online communities," he explained impatiently. "People there were throwing around all kinds of theories and ideas. Survival plans and what not. Porter was one of the other active people on there. He used my fucking idea, while I went through hell since all this started!"

The two men looked at him with bland faces. They didn't get it.

" _I_ posted this idea in a fucking subreddit!" Tobias yelled. "I couldn't even use that idea myself, because who would ever believe I was a scientist? I was in fucking high school two years ago!"

They threw each other a weary look as Tobias went on.

"I don't fucking believe this! I walked alone across the entire fucking country and this asshole goes and steals my idea. Gets some dumbasses to play his bodyguards!" Tobias was red in the face from anger by now. "E-porterhouse69 was his handle. His icon was a damn pony version of himself. It had a _mullet_!"

Tobias hadn't talked this much at once in two years, but now he couldn't seem to stop. He started to pace back and forth mumbling to himself. All the shit he went through and some guy from the internet used his ideas to have himself a nice road trip with a bunch of military types as escorts. Done. That's what he was. With everything.

"Um, so ya comin' with?" the Southern lilt interrupted his thoughts.

Tobias stopped his pacing and gave them the stinkeye.

"If I know one thing, it's that Eugene Porter is not an idiot. We used to play online strategy games together. If _he_ is staying in Alexandria, it probably _is_ the smartest choice. Let's go."


End file.
